In this episode, Doug sits down with Rex Miller for some real talk about work, purpose, and finding balance. We talk about what it means to love what you do — and how grace plays a big role in making that possible. Catch the full one hour chat on Rex's podcast - The Resilience Lab. We also get into: • How to stay present when life feels busy • The story behind JSI’s “Love What You Do” message • What real purpose at work looks like • How to avoid burnout and build strong relationships • Why starting simple conversations can lead to big change
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- Welcome to the Love What You Do podcast. I'm your host Doug Shapiro. These are
the conversations that open doors to what's possible when you love what you do.
- Gosh, it's the calm before the storm. - Yes, here we are Sunday morning. - Sunday
morning. - Are we the only, there's one other person in the showroom. Right. Yeah.
This is my favorite time, or Thursday morning, one of those two. I already ran into
Sid this morning jogging along the Riverwalk. So everybody is beginning to ascend.
The podcasting community is super supportive community. So when you bump into someone
who knows the, I won't call it the struggle, but you put stuff out into the world
and sometimes you just wonder, is anyone listening? - Right, every time, yeah.
- Every time. - And you plead, you know, subscribe, like. - Yeah, yeah. - It means a
lot.
Now, you're in a new role, so how long has it been? - It's been 10 months.
- 10 months, okay. - So still, I mean, by my standards, that's still fresh. - It is.
- Yeah, yeah. - Now that you're traveling and, you know, it was easier before
because, you know, you were not on the road meeting reps and clients were coming in
and telling the story. Now you're on the road and you've got teenagers.
- Yes. - That are very active in their sports. - They are. And You know, I've gotten
good at that. Like I have had that in the past. And so I know when I've gone too
far one way or the other, usually not the other. It's usually when I'm gone too
long, but I'm super conscious of it. So it's been fine. I did have a colleague
tell me once, be where you are. And I thought that was one of the greatest pieces
of advice. But just real profound, yeah. And it is really profound because, you
know, like there'd be times I'm like missing my family. And, you know, like I'm
someplace, but like my heart is in this other place. Or vice versa,
you know, you're with your family, but there's a big event in New York. You got
stuff on your mind. You didn't go to or stuff on your mind. And he's just like,
just be where you are. Okay. So that's probably one of the biggest burnout stressors
that we face in the industry. So how do you turn off something on fire over here
or an urgent proposal that's got to get in or something like that? And you're at...
Now, I've called you before and I can tell you're at a game or something.
- Oh yeah, yeah. - And I say, okay, I get it, you're at a game, so how do you
turn off? - I have an answer for that. - Okay, I want it. - As you're saying this,
like I'm thinking about what allows me to do that, to turn off. And there's a word
that I think is, and I've been thinking about this word a lot, which is grace.
And there's kind of like three directions of grace that like I am feeling and I
don't, I haven't really put this into words yet. But we are now. We are now. The,
you know, what allows me to be in my work when I'm here is my wife,
I know she gives me grace, you know? I know my kids give me grace.
- Wow.
- When I'm, and I had a game and my team has an issue and they call me and I
answer and they can hear the crowd in the background or they give me grace,
you know? - Yeah. - And then You have to give the third direction is you have to
give yourself grace, you know, and that's the part about being where you are. But I
think, uh, when, when you don't have grace in all three directions, then it's really
hard to do what you said.
And so I actually think just in general, there is not enough grace given.
I mean, yeah, not enough grace than when you're driving on the road. You know,
like we don't give people grace. We just assume they're all (beep) Somebody said,
if anyone who's driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than
you is a maniac, you know? It's like, it's like - - It's right, yeah. - Like no
one, there's no - - Or if they pass you and says, "Ah, that guy passed me, now I
gotta," you know? - We don't give enough grace. And I think that is the key is
knowing when you've got it and then letting that relax you.
- So in coaching, you talk to people who are kind of at the edge,
burnout or whatever.
Universally, they don't have anybody in their circle that gives them grace.
They only have people that make demands. So it could be the spouse or the kids.
And we know there's this loneliness epidemic. In my groups,
I'll ask how many people could you call it 2 a .m. that are in proximity to you,
not in Europe or family or whatever. They're in proximity to you. That would come
and help you out. Wow. And we know the numbers, it's one to one and a half that
you have in that inner circle. That's a real deficit and you've cultivated.
So part of it is you've got to cultivate it and you've got to be relational,
in other words, invest. And I'm sure you've seen colleagues that talented,
but just they can't escape any place. No grace anywhere. I love the word.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's probably there's probably even a better word for it. But
yeah, when you when you don't feel like you've got that. Right. Yeah. That's tough.
Yeah, it's a burden. There's just too much weight when you look at,
You know, I I I lived in that season, you know 25 years ago I lived in that
season where I felt the universe gave me no grace You know dot -com crash Health
wasn't the best Teenage kids Demanding and close to me all that stuff.
So I know there are seasons of that But I did get through it because I had some
people that gave me grace. So this is just kind of a,
a preaching note in the podcast here.
Build relationships, deep friendships, find your community, find places to go outside
of work so that you have that, you know. Yeah. I mean, I, I see some of the,
I mean, you've got so many friends, Rex. And I've seen that firsthand, just people
that are so happy for anything you do, whether it's move or,
you know, just start a-- - Yeah, part of that's been just being alive a long time.
- Oh yeah, but it's been, I think it's your genuine interest in other people. Well,
that gets into our kind of curiosity about storytelling and The love what you do
was was that already a slogan here? It was okay. It's kind of a funny thing the
this happened gosh close to a decade ago, we were doing our DC showroom and there
was a design firm this Gensler See, I was working on it. And one of the designers
was on a call with the JSI team and said, "Gosh, you guys just love what you do."
And the CEO, Mike Elliott at the time. - Bing. - And yeah,
and our VP of marketing just grabbed it. - Wow. - And they just, they started to
put it out there. And the more we put it out there, the more it was like, this
is us, you know? And love what you do has been the slogan. And...
So, the whole wood thing is something that you can get great passion about,
you know, the uniqueness of it and just the human scale of it and the stories
behind it and all of that. But layer for me, some of the areas that you guys
really are intentional I love what you do. - Yeah,
I think if I were to put that in layers, the very foundational one is internal,
you know, which is-- - You mean like love, like every employee. - Inside,
yeah, exactly, inside the walls of JSI. You know, like that message, before you even
put it on a wall, it better exist inside those walls. So let's unpack that a
little bit because we know that 70 % of people in the workplace hate what they do.
They'd rather be anyplace else than work. And we know that 20 % are actually working
against you. We call those cave dwellers, and that stands for consistently against
virtually everything. That's good. I love the cave dwellers.
How do you what just unpack? Yeah, how do you how do you help people love what
they do? I think the very most important thing that you can do and this is This
goes for for any company or CEO is a clear purpose Clear purpose because you can't
have optimism for the sake of having optimism like What what is it,
you know, that you're optimistic about? - Right. - I mean, if you have optimism, you
have hope, you believe in something, it's easier to love what you do. - So what's
that unique difference that you bring? Is that the purpose side or the why we get
up every morning? - It's fine, this is the question I wanted to ask you. So Rex, I
feel like this is not really fair. But yeah, I think there's a foundational piece
of it, which is like, if you have a clear purpose, you have something to be
optimistic about, right? I think the purpose comes in many layers though.
I mean, the business has a purpose. Yeah, you need your own purpose as well.
And I guess that's where, this is where I hold a mirror of Rex. And I'm like,
okay, Rex, my big question to you, I feel like this has been your interview and
it's not fair because I wanted the question. My big question was, okay,
we can say love what you do,
but like, how do you get there? Like how do you, not as a business,
how do you as a person get there? Because with the people I've been interviewing
and these are people who love what they do, I'm asking them the question, but what
changes? What change when you love what you - Yeah. - But the bigger question I
think a lot of people have is like, well, am I in the right job? Am I,
you know, like, is it the company? Is it me? Is it my situation? Like, what do I
do to get to that place where I can look on that wall? I see that sign, love
what you do, and I'm like, that's me, you know? Yeah, well, I think people start
with the wrong premise. And in the premise is,
"I need to find something that I love doing."
So, research is very clear that if you're able to do what you naturally do best
and develop mastery, you'll love what you do.
And what
And you know, we use the Clifton strengths, but there's a variety of things I could
do and still love what I do because I'm playing to my strengths and I'm developing
mastery. So the message is this, in terms of where do you find happiness?
It's gotta be internal. Maslow said, "What you can become, you must become." not
must from it's your duty, must from you will not be happy and satisfied unless
you're continually moving towards that best version of yourself.
And you, and we don't know it, just like this whoop strap I wear.
You know, when I first started wearing it eight years ago, I didn't know I was
burning the candle at both ends. I had suboptimized, my body suboptimized. So what
happens to all of us is we're in the environment and we've adapted and we've
adapted downwards towards that environment where we fit in, but we don't fit.
And so the first thing is discovering who you are at your best. And you can take
an assessment, but you can just go through experiences when you feel excited,
you know, the dopamine's going, you're getting that flow, you can start saying, well,
what's behind it? Not people confuse the activity with what's really going on inside.
- Yeah, I agree. Actually, we'll talk about assessment because the Genius Park was
that assess, for me personally, that was that assessment. That was my opportunity to
understand the difference between the activities and then the actual strength,
what's going on inside, and how much I love to include others.
Like, you know, like I have this piece of me that does that. And now that I know
that that's a
I, I use opportunities anytime I have them to, to do that,
you know, to lean into that strength. But I would have never caught that because
that's not, you know, the, those strengths are not the activities. Like he says, the
things going on behind, you know, it's a genius spark, I guess, is this sort of
like amalgamation of these life experiences that you want to hand over. Yeah. 25
years of being frustrated with seeing assessments where you get kind of fragmented
pieces of what it is, but not that whole picture, and you have to learn,
you have to become a technical expert on whatever the assessment is. And it should
be very simple. It's just a simple description of who you are at
It's been, so that's number one in terms of how do you find satisfaction and
happiness. But number two is what you guys are doing, clear purpose. So if you're
in an organization where you know why the organization does what it does and what
the benefit is and what the world would lose if we didn't show up every day to do
that. And the two things are the clarity about that and the consistency in walking
the talk. And the challenge with most of the organizations I work with is that they
do have a mission or a purpose or whatever, but it's muddled. Yes.
And it's not, and it's not modeled. Oh, I'm gonna use that.
It's muddled and it's not modeled. That's good. Yeah. I like that. That's good. And
it's really simple. So there's three components are can you help me tap into my
natural strengths to do the job you need me to do? Am I clear as to what we're
doing that's going to make the world better that aligns with my values? What's
important to me? And third, every day, Does Doug walk the talk or one day he's
walking the talk about we're all a family and the next day He's looking at well.
We're gonna lay everybody off because times are bad and And I thought we were a
family what happened That's a good one And you know,
I I think this muddled this word muddled is actually I think what so many either
companies or teams suffer from or even people who are maybe trying to define
themselves. And there was a, I don't remember where this came from,
but I heard this somewhere is never sacrifice clarity for comprehensiveness.
And I've hung on to that. I like that. Because I think we tried to Very
comprehensive missions that are we're going to do this. We're going to do this And
we're going to save the children and we're going to you know, we're going to do
that We're going to pour back into our community and we're going to be this and be
that and we're going to be innovative and it's like No, like what are you really
going to do? So like a Netflix their mission entertain the world? I love and I
love that. It's like crystal clear, right, you know Well, we're going to do another
alliteration so So you've got, what were the two C words?
- Oh, I was gonna go with muddled. - Well, you were talking about clarity. - Clarity
and comprehensiveness. - Okay, those were the two, and also people try to be clever.
- Oh yeah. - That's the third alliteration. - Yeah, because they try to do
alliterations. - Right. So another mistake too is that companies that talk about the
culture thing think that when leaders go away on a retreat and hire a facilitator
like me and talk about what's important, it's so disconnected from who the company
really is. And I like to think of culture as a garden. It's already there.
It's either, you've got culture, it's either by design or by default. It's either
healthy or unhealthy. It's never not there. It's always there. So your job is to
find out what you actually do have as a culture first. And then where do you want
to take it and then begin to weed the garden and then cultivate? That's what we
learned when we moved down to - Wow. - Yeah, because it was just full of invasive
species and weeds and all that stuff. - Still, I mean, what a symbolic sort of
journey. - Oh yeah, right. - That's wild. - Yeah, it is wild. So tell me about where
you're headed with this whole love what you do and the story. So you showed me,
you know, nobody's in the showroom except you and I. - Yeah, it's just That's
hanging. Yeah. And so you showed me some of the wood heritage and the whole idea
of heritage and next generation. And when was that first factory built?
1870? 1876. My goodness. So like I think about it in different ways, but when is
this like I, 'cause I, this has been on my mind a lot. If I gave you a penny,
you'd be like, thanks for the penny, you know, I don't know, throw it over your
shoulder. But if I gave you a penny and I said, hey, this penny was a penny that
my great grandfather used for a down payment on a ring,
you know, and you would hold that penny and you'd be like, I have something special
here. You know, like this is not just the penny. And that's what I think we know
we have in our hands. Like this, this company has meant so much to so many people,
families, to the Jasper community for 150 years. Next year will be 150 years.
And I just got goosebumps. I literally just got goosebumps.
I think about all the people that worked so hard, that cared,
that handed something over better, that handed something over better, that handed
something over better. And now it's here, like it's in my hands. Like I'm holding
this penny.
And what am I gonna do with this penny? And so that's the feeling, it's not just
a penny, it's not just a company. And I think that is why history matters.
And so now this is a responsibility. And I feel like I'm a part of it.
And I care about that community. My kids were all born there, you know? I care
about the community. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, they were all born in
Jasper. So, You know what and it sounds very self -serving like you know to hand
this business over to the next generation Which will be largely Jasper. I mean, yes,
we have people all over the world that our products right things like that, right?
but It's okay that it's a bit self -serving because In the end if our purpose is
to build something better for the next generation. That's It's a long -term view.
It's not a quarterly objective. It's a long -term view. And when you have a long
-term view, you make better decisions. You do the right thing.
And that is, I think, what is inherently different about our company is this long
-term point of view. Because I don't think there's a lot of people that can say
that that's the filter for every major decision. You know, and so it's a shift in
management. The Greek word for management is steward. It's oikos.
Huh, so it's steward. And that's what I'm hearing you talk about. It also fits too
with sustainability and you know, there's economic sustainability, there's the force
that you have to cultivate and all of that. So you guys are stewards.
It's also interesting too that in the beginning, you talked about the focus on AI.
So it's got to be future focused as well. - Yeah, yeah, I think that's something
that Mike, our CEO, really brings to the company is. Yes, there is a deep respect
for heritage and that we do have something special, but that is what's driving him
to invest in AI, you know, to be so future focused because the world is changing
fast. If you don't stay with it, you know, we're going to be like so many other
furniture companies or manufacturing towns in the US where somebody comes in and had
no vision, right? No connection to how the world is changing. Another piece to the
conglomerate. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know who's interviewing who in this one.
- No, I said, why? - But what I wanna talk about is how do we change the story
that our industry is stuck in? I'm so tired of going around and it really does
feel like, we have no imaginative margin to think possibility.
We're so constrained. When I talk to groups or audiences,
one of the first questions are, give me something for some quick wins. And it tells
me, Oh my gosh. We're just wanting to check some boxes, get through the day,
make it a little bit better. And we're in this historic, historic moment where the
whole communication platform has shifted. And we've only seen anything like this 500
years ago when the printing press came. Yeah. And there was 150 years of revolution
And, you know, kingdoms were overthrown and mercantilism went away and we saw our
first schools come and capitalism came in and then at the Treaty of Westphalia was
the first nation state, the first idea of a nation built on a concept.
That's what the printing press did, gave us the idea that you could build a country
based on an idea it was never thought of before nothing ever and so we look at
all this all the old stuff that had to be thrown out and the revolution and the
disruption and Clay Shurkey who is a professor up at NYU says he thinks it's going
to be you know 50 years of upheaval revolution on a global scale.
Wow. So how do we begin crafting the story of that better future?
What are you guys working on? Oh my gosh, Rex, this is such a huge question.
Well, it's what I wonder about. And I know you're,
you know, that's you, you've kind of, Do you know who Rory Sutherland is?
- I know the name, yeah. - Okay, he's the guy, I think it's BDO, advertising,
but he's the reframer. So we're in this moment of having to reframe our story
for different purpose, different meaning type of thing. And you are, I consider to
be kind of the Rory Sutherland of the industry, the storyteller that's reframing,
you're not really looking at this, what you're looking at is really something bigger
over here type of story. - You know, Rex, I mean, you, I don't mean to dodge this,
okay? You wrote a book, "Humanizing the Education Machine." - Yeah,
right. - I mean, you look at systems and you see patterns.
This is this is on your mind. I'm more interested in your perspective than mine,
because I don't know, Rex, I'm just going to be vulnerable here. I don't know. I
think it's as simple as start the conversation. So here's what I run into all the
time. People feel like their hands are tied. They've got budgets,
They've got typicals. They've got standards. They've been told what to buy by the
time it gets down. But I was in that mode,
that desperation job that we sold and stuff like that. All I did is get together
with people who are equally frustrated than I was. And I said,
"Are you as frustrated with the way projects get delivered the way I am?" And I
got stories like, you know, Dean Strombum with Gensler, Prince Boyd Gensler. Yeah.
Yep. Retired. Oh, nice. Congrats, Dean. But, you know, he said, you know what? We
spend more time double -checking and handling claims and stuff like that.
Our best energy and effort isn't towards creating a great solution.
Dick Hayward said, it's a shame that by the end of the process we're not doing our
best work for the client.
Les Shepard, who was at that time the chief architect for GSA, when I was in his
office, he didn't know who I was. And it was kind of the Wizard of Oz chamber at
the GSA, this long marble thing into his waited,
you know, 40 minutes past what our time was. And he said, I got 15 minutes to
talk to you. What is it? 90 minutes later, he said, if you can help me figure out
how to deliver a courthouse and faster than seven years, I want part of this
conversation. Wow. Start with what people are frustrated with, even in your own
office.
And just start learning together. I mean, what is, is there a,
is there a process to this? Because I mean, you've done this, like you've gathered
parties together. I do have a process. I was going to say, this is what you do,
you uncover these things for groups of people. Yeah, but anybody can do it really.
You know, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And it's really just, you go on a
learning journey with people. This is something we're not happy with in our company,
right? And so they get together. Maybe it's the way the tool shed is organized.
Maybe it's the way the break room is. And a bunch of people get together and say,
"Well, what could we do better?" - Yeah, yeah. - It's a lean process,
right? Whatever bugs you, get some people together and figure out how to get that.
But we're so robotic in what robotic in what we do. The first place that humanizing
has to come is we have to take agency and say I'm not the victim. There's probably
other people that feel the way I do. Let's go find some of those people, get a
conversation going and then change from there. That's the way all change works.
And we need more people who feel like they can make a difference. And I just see
a lack of that out there where people are keeping their heads low or trying to get
through the week. And that's got to be a miserable life to do that.
- You are a hard charger Rex, and you go for it. I mean, you say it,
whatever it is you want to say, you say it. I'm 70.
There's advantages to that. You know, there was a time where I may have been more
circumspect with that, but... - Sure. - Yeah, I've only got a little bit more runway
to leave that deposit. Yeah, so how do we wanna land the plane here? - I guess
first, just where do we find you? Let's just say, you've got your podcast rolling,
Right? - Right, yeah. - The resilience lab. LinkedIn's probably your best channel,
right? - LinkedIn is your best channel, right. - Awesome, I mean, who's podcast is
this going on? Is this going on? I love what you do. - Maybe it's gonna be on
both. - It's gonna be on both, is the answer, right? (upbeat music)
Thanks for joining me here. I love what you do.
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